windows printing problem

[nat2345]

We have a linksys print server (wired) and 3 printers. The problem is that whenever we print more than 20 copies of the same text document, after about the 20th page, it slows down by only printing 2 pages every 5-10 seconds. Each file in the print que is only 500 bytes. The spool folder fills up with files and even when I move the spool folder to another hdd the problem occurs. The only solution which worked was to choose the setting "print directly to the printer". However, that causes a problem when we try printing 2 seperate long documents to the same printer - the 2 docs get mixed together, it doesn't wait for one doc to finish printing before printing the next one.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[gbaughma]

What OS are you running? I remember a "bug" in NT where it had a limited number of ports available that it would open, making print jobs crawl if you spooled up too many of them. (A perfect example was at a bank... they downloaded custom fonts to their printer from a batch file... essentially a bunch of copy filename > lpt1: well, it did about 30 or 40 of them, each only about 100 bytes long, and it would take 30 minutes to download them! The fix was:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;141708&Product=nts40

Just my $.02

"In order to start solving a problem, one must first identify it's owner." --Me
--Greg

 

[nat2345]

I'm using win xp.

I'm not sure that article will help in my case where I'm using a linksys print server as opposed to a printer containing an ipaddress.

By the way, when I said 20 copies, I mean clicking the printer icon once for each copy not specifying in the print properties to print 40 prints.

Thanks for the reply Greg.

 

[gbaughma]

Sounds like a similar problem, though.

Another thing you might try is throttling back the speed on your NIC to 10 if it's running 100.... I've seen weird network problems (including printing problems) caused from flaky wiring, and throttling back helps.



Just my $.02

"In order to start solving a problem, one must first identify it's owner." --Me
--Greg